Taking to the streets
“We are closing in fast on the limits of constitutional process to contain Trump,” Brian Beutler writes this morning. Read: Get off your asses (if you haven’t already).
Beutler urges congressional Democrats to boycott Donald Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday in spite of the fact that “Democratic leaders have instead encouraged members to ignore the activists and show up to be berated and lied to by an aspiring dictator.”
They are encouraging members to “bring a guest who has been harmed by the Trump administration’s early actions or will be hurt by the House Republican budget,”
Like abused spouses, Democrats “imagine that attendance will be taken, absences will be noticed, and backlash directed at frontline members who don’t treat Trump with the same respect they’d show a normal statesman.”
Which is the point! Trump is neither normal nor a statesman. Don’t behave as if he is! Sadly, most Democrats in Congress have two speeds. If you don’t like this one, you’ll really dislike their other one. But as a therapist might ask a perfectionist client frozen by indecision, what’s the worst that could happen if they boycott? Perhaps they should consider what could happen if they don’t?
The Trump beast thrives on attention. Give him none. Make the press divide its attention.
Beutler adds:
Trump has shown contempt for both Congress and the courts, and singled out elected Democrats and liberal judges for particular abuse. He has plain dictatorial ambition and taunts the overwhelming majority of Americans with his aspirations to kinghood. He is a criminal who claims to be above the law. He has betrayed both this country and American allies for purposes of self-enrichment, and seeks to align the United States with a global axis of murderous thieves. We don’t have votes of no-confidence in the American system, which limits the number of ways Trump’s opponents can express their total lack of faith in his leadership, but one easy option is to not make ourselves captive to another of his dishonest screeds.
If all we’ve witnessed these past six weeks, or for nine years prior, hasn’t prepared frontline Democrats to win that narrow debate, they might consider new lines of work.
Contrary to Beltway commentary, Congress and the courts aren’t the last guardrails. Mass public protest is, with all the risk that entails with an autocrat in the White House who’d like to see protesters shot.
Elected federal Democrats have a platform and they damned well better use it while they can and spare their constituents that risk. But not by standing behind a lectern and blandly blathering about how Trump is not addressing the price of eggs. Yes it’s true, most average Americans are unaware that their freedoms are gravely at risk. But the job of leaders is not to ignore the risk but to make them care … before physical risk is their only recourse for preserving their beloved freedoms.
Beutler continues:
We are closing in fast on the limits of constitutional process to contain Trump. If they collapse, mass politics and civil disobedience will be the only tools left available.
So just as Democrats have learned to contemplate everything through the eyes of the median voter, and how he intends to cast his ballot in the next election, they should begin evaluating the form of their opposition for how well or poorly it will help them rally the public.
With respect to this joint address, they should know that Trump will lie promiscuously. Less than two months into his presidency, he’s driven a strong economy to the brink of collapse, but will blame the evident turbulence—for which he is singularly responsible—on Joe Biden and Democrats. He will lie about Russia and Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He will lie about waste and fraud in government, while stripping it for parts.
Without a counter-program, this is all most Americans will hear. If Democrats boycott the address and stage an alternate event, Americans will gather that something is very wrong, and may even hear a rival but true story about the republic under internal siege.
And it’s past time for workaday Americans to hear a story like that. To be rallied. To see that Trump’s entire opposition views him as a derelict. That he’s set the country up for failure, so that a small band of connected billionaires can loot it and retreat to their fortresses.
I wish I were more hopeful that Democrats will send that message in a manner that will demand press coverage.
If Trump on Tuesday were to openly declare that the U.S. is now aligned with Putin’s Russia against NATO and Ukraine, which of you Democrats wants to be in his audience giving assent by your presence?
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